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The origins of LXX studies in FinlandRaija Sollamo aa University of Helsinki , P.O.Box 33, FIN‐00014, FinlandPublished online: 04 Jul 2008.

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THE ORIGINS OF LXX STUDIES INFINLAND

Raija Sollamo,P.O.Box 33 FIN-00014, University of Helsinki, Finland

In the beginning there was Ilmari Soisalon-Soininen. With him beginsthe story of Finnish Septuagint studies. The history of Septuagintstudies in Helsinki is to a very great extent his story. He studiedtheology before the Second World War, taking his degree in theology(called sacri ministerii candidatus) in 1942. In the upper forms atsecondary school he had already been very keen on languages, and atthe Faculty of Theology he became enthusiastic about Hebrew andGreek. These languages were his destiny. At the front during the warhe studied Greek, Hebrew and Arabic in order to take anothermaster's degree, in the Faculty of Arts. For him it was an escape fromthe terrible reality of the war. His teachers in Semitic languages wereProfessors Aapeli Saarisalo (Professor of Oriental Philology 1935-63)and Armas Salonen, who was later appointed Extraordinary Professorof Assyriology, 1949-1978. In Greek he presented his final examina-tion to Professor Henric Zilliacus, who had recently become Professorof Greek Language and Literature.

When it was time for Soisalon-Soininen to find a theme for his doc-.toral dissertation, it was evident to his teachers at the Faculty ofTheology, Professors Antti F. Puukko and Aarre Lauha, that thethesis had to deal with the biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek.Thus they suggested that he should take his subject from the Sep-tuagint. If he had followed Professor Puukko's suggestion, he wouldhave compared the MT and the LXX of the books of Samuel andKings. Fortunately, he did not take on such an impossible task.At this stage his teachers heard that Professor Gillis Gerleman in

Lund in Sweden had published a study on the LXX1 and recom-

1 Studies in the Septuagint I: The Book of Job. Studies in the Septuagint II:Chronicles (Lunds Universitets Årsskrift 1946). Gerleman had written his

Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament vol. 10 no. 2 (1996)© Scandinavian University Press

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mended that their doctoral student should take a trip to Lund in orderto consult Gerleman. Gerleman suggested to him that he should studythe differences between the A- and B-texts in the Book of Judges.This was also a very difficult task. When he once complained to Ger-leman that the differences between the A- and B-texts do not makeany sense, the different alternatives occurring sometimes in B andsometimes in A, Gerleman qualified his earlier suggestion by sayingthat he should attempt to examine the different ways of translating inthe Book of Judges. This advice proved to be very helpful. The seedof the translation-technical approach was now sown in his mind. Dur-ing his visit to Lund he had a splendid opportunity to make use oflibraries with a better selection of Septuagint literature than the Uni-versity Library of Helsinki had in those days.

The academic disputation took place in 1951 at the University ofHelsinki. The opponent was Professor Gillis Gerleman and the lan-guage of the disputation was Swedish, even though the doctoral thesis,entitled Die Textformen der Septuaginta-ÜberSetzung des Richter-buches, was written in German.2 The main finding of his dissertationwas that both the A- and B-texts are based on one and the same trans-lation. He assumed that the A-groups (A I, A II and A III) and the B-group derive from the Hexapla quite independently of one another.Thus the text groups A I, A II, A III and B are not different transla-tions, but different recensions. Soisalon-Soininen also attempted toshow how the differences had arisen. He concluded that all knowntext groups are Origenic or Hexaplaric, because they all show tracesof Hexaplaric influence. Some asterisked passages are found in alltext-forms of Judges. He suggested that the Origenic text was a vastrepository of variant readings from which virtually all of the materialin our recensions was drawn, so that they differ only in the varyingselection of Hexaplaric readings. I quote:

"Falls — etwas, was im vorstehenden für sehr wahrscheinlich angenommenwerden konnte — die Verschiedenheiten nicht auf spätere, dem hebräischenText nach vorgenommene Korrekturen zurückzuführen sind, so hat der origi-nistische Text in weit größerem Umfang auf verschiedene Lesarten und aufverschiedenartige Verdolmetschungen des hebräischen Textes zurückzufüh-rendes Parallelmaterial enthalten müssen, als irgend eine der erhaltenen

doctoral thesis on Zephaniah in 1942 under the title Zephanja. Textkri-tisch und literarisch untersucht. His supervisor was Professor JohannesLindblom, a famous scholar of prophecy.

2 It was published in Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia — AnnalesAcademiae Scientiarum Fennicae. Sarja — Ser. B, Nide — Tom. 72, 1 (Hel-sinki 1951), 123 pp.

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The Origins of LXX Studies in Finland 161

Textformen vermuten läßt ...Wenigstens in der Hauptsache sind die in Fragestehenden Verschiedenheiten also derart entstanden, daß aus dem reichlichviel Parallelmaterial enthaltenen originistischen Texte in mannigfaltigsterWeise Material ausgewählt worden ist." (s. 110-111).

He was wrong, however, in arguing that all the text-forms are total-ly Origenic.3 His picture of the Hexapla was a beginner's illusion, butthis is understandable, for the guidance he had received from Gerle-man was too scanty, and his task of restoring the entire textual his-tory of the Greek Judges was too huge and too demanding for a post-graduate student. As the official opponent, Gerleman strongly dis-agreed with him about the role of the Hexapla:

"Även olikheterna textformerna emellan ha enligt Soisalon-Soininen singrund i Hexaplas Septuagintakolumn, som han anser har innehâllit rikligtmed parallelmatcrial. Pâ denna punkt är författarens argumentering intefüllt övertygande, och det förefaller som om han i nägon man underskattatbetydelsen av de olikheter som finnas mellan handskriftsgrupperna. Orige-ncs' femte kolumn kan enligt min mcning knappast ha gett upphov till tvà saolika textformer som A och B." SvTeolKvskr 27 (1951), 227.

The international reviews of Ilmari Soisalon-Soininen's dissertationwere crushing. To take just one example:"Ist somit das eigentliche Ziel der Untersuchung verfehlt, so bietet sie doch

im Einzelnen nicht wenig Zutreffendes ..."4

This was the high price which he had to pay for his pioneering work.Professor Peter Katz and one of his pupils wrote the most criticalreviews, apparently for the simple reason that Katz's pupil Mr. W. G.Lambert had also carried out research on the Greek texts of Judges,and they felt the urgency to justify their own results in opposition toSoisalon-Soininen. In many respects, however, they appreciated thework which Soisalon-Soininen had done in a very difficult field. Iquote Peter Katz:

"Diese Erstlingsarben ist warm zu begrüßen. Sie zeugt von guter Schulungund seltenem Wagemut. Denn der neue Mitarbeiter auf dem solcher so be-dürftigen Feld der LXX-Philologie hat sich das fraglos schwerste Themaausgesucht. Sein neuer Beitrag ist die Einbeziehung der sprachlich-syntakti-schen Seite der Übersetzung, von der aus er Maßstäbe zur Beurteilung desrelativen Werts der verschiedenen Überlieferungszweige zu gewinnen ver-sucht. Hiermit wird in der Tat eine Lücke ausgefüllt." (TLZ 11 [1952], 154).

Lambert stated that he agreed with Soisalon-Soininen in so far thatthe group "A II has relatively most ancient material to offer" (VT 2,1952, 185).

3 Katz clearly states in his review that this statement, one of the mainresults of the study, does not hold good. TLZ 77 (1952), 155.

4 Peter Katz in TLZ 77 (1952), 156.

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After the War, when Soisalon-Soininen prepared his dissertation, Fin-land was still somewhat isolated from Central Europe. The leadingSeptuagint scholars were Alfred Rahlfs,5 Joseph Ziegler and PaulKahle in Germany, and Peter Katz in England, whither he had fledfrom Germany, because he was a Jew. In England he also changed hisname to Walters in order to hide his background. At that time Katzand Kahle fought like cat and dog over the origins of the Septuagint.In spite of his severe criticism of Soisalon-Soininen, it was Katz withwhom Soisalon-Soininen later became acquainted and it was his sidethat Soisalon-Soininen took against Kahle with regard to the originsof the Septuagint. To be accurate, I must mention that Soisalon-Soininen once met Kahle, too, in Britain in the 50s, and there dis-cussed the subject with him. Soisalon-Soininen's notion of the originsof the Septuagint is best to be read in his Finnish textbook Vanhan te-stamentin alkuteksti (The Original Text of the Old Testament, pub-lished in Helsinki in 1953). Some decades afterwards he used to saythat now he would oppose Kahle's theories more strongly that he didin his textbook.

Nevertheless, the severe criticism of his doctoral thesis also had apositive effect upon Soisalon-Soininen. He became interested in theHexapla. His next study dealt with the linguistic character of the as-terisked additions. Both this and his doctoral thesis had alreadytouched upon translation technique, i.e. the problem as to when differ-ent renderings derive from the translator's hand and when from dif-ferences in the Hebrew Vorlage. His observations on the differentways of translating were methodologically important and absolutelycorrect. In his book Der Character der asterisierten Zusätze in derSeptuaginta6 he studied the relation of the additions to the basicLXX text and found a considerable amount of inconsistency in Ori-gen's work. The longer additions did not follow the same translationtechnique as minor translation-technical additions (such as the posses-sive pronouns) in the Septuagint column of the Hexapla. In the LXX

5 One symptom of this isolation was manifest in Soisalon-Soininen's doctoralthesis: he did not use the text edition of the LXX by Alfred Rahlfs, butonly those by Brooke-McLean and Swete. He also neglected some articleswritten by Rahlfs in MSU. According to Katz, this led Soisalon-Soininen toprove the same as Rahlfs had already done in his publications, namely thatOtto Pretzl was wrong in his high evaluation of recension R. See thereview by Katz in TLZ 77 (1952), 155.

6 Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia — Annales Academiae Scientia-rum Fennicae, Sarja — Ser. B, Nide — Tom. 114 (Helsinki 1959).

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The Origins of LXX Studies in Finland 163

column Origen mainly used a very slavish translation technique,

every suffix and every element of the Vorlage having its counterpart

in the Greek translation. The column was drawn up in line with Ori-

gen's own ideals of translation. In his pluses and minuses Origen ad-

hered very strictly to the quantity of text in the Hebrew original. In

practice he seems not to have worked with a Hebrew text, but rather

to have relied on the later translators, Aquila, Theodotion and Sym-

machus, which were his sources for correcting the LXX text.7 When,

for instance, a longer passage was missing in the Septuagint, he added

the asterisked text as usual, but did not translate it from Hebrew

himself. He mostly took it directly from Theodotion, not even cor-

recting it according to his normal principles. Therefore, the lengthy

pluses represent quite another translation technique than does the

Septuagint column elsewhere, even though Theodotion's translation

technique was also very literal.8

Soisalon-Soininen's results were significant in general, and in particu-

lar for his future career. He was on the right track in distinguishing

between the translation technique of the shorter and longer additions

and in suggesting that the longer additions were quoted from Theo-

dotion.9 The permanent value of Soisalon-Soininen's contribution con-

sists in his observations within the field of translation-technique. The

review by S. Segert hit the point by stating that

7 In his review Roben Hanhart agrees with Soisalon-Soinincn that Origenwas inconsistent in his correcting practice and that he mainly usedAquila's, Theodotion's and Symmachus' translations as his sources insteadof the Hebrew original. Helikon 4 (1964), 669-671.

8 The Greek text of the Twelve Prophets, which was found among the DeadSea Scrolls at Nahal Hever, demonstrates that the Septuagint text was littleby little developing in a more literal direction, the Greek translation beingcorrected with the aid of the Hebrew parent text to correspond moreaccurately to the best Hebrew manuscripts. The Scroll of the TwelveProphets is considered to contain a recensional text. This recension iscalled καίγε, since the Hebrew is usually translated into Greek asκαίγε. According to Barthélemy, Theodotion's text was also a representantof the καίγε-reccnsion. But Barthélemy's preliminary edition of the scrollof the Minor Prophets did not appear until 1963. This implies thatSoisalon-Soinincn could not use Barthélcmy's findings in his study.Dominique Barthélemy, Les devanciers d'Aquila (VTS X; Leiden 1963).

9 Robert Hanhart partly agrees with Soisalon-Soinincn, but criticizes hismethod of discussing the shorter translation-technical and longer (matter-of-fact) additions separately. Recensioni (Soisalon-Soininen). Helikon 1964,670-671. Rather similar viewpoints were expressed by Joseph Schreiner inhis review in Erasmus 15 (1963), 201-104.

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"... doch der Hauptteil des Buches von Soisalon-Soininen ist damit nicht be-troffen, da seine Materialsammlungen und Beobachtungen zur Übersetzungs-technik an sich bestehen bleiben, auch wenn die Herkunft oder die Datie-rung der einzelnen hier behandelten Erscheinungen geändert würde. Viel-leicht wird der wichtigste Beitrag dieses inhaltreichen Buches — gegenüberder Meinung des Verfassers — gerade hier liegen, da sowohl das Materialals auch seine Interpretation für die weitere Erforschung der Übersetzungs-methoden — nicht nur des griechischen Alten Testaments, sondern auchallgemeiner gefaßt — sehr willkommen sein werden."^0

The only existing account in English of the history of Finnish ex-egesis was written by Esko Haapa in 1963. It was published in a col-lection of articles, entitled Finnish Theology Past and Present. Heconcluded his presentation on Soisalon-Soininen with the statement:"Soisalon-Soininen is docent of Old Testament Exegetics at the Uni-versity of Helsinki." (p. 24). So it is now high time to continue thestory, or actually the story first begins with Soisalon-Soininen's nextbook Die Infinitive in der Septuagintan (1965). In his research onthe Hebrew and Greek infinitives he sketched the methodologicaloutlines for studying the translation-technique of the Septuaginttranslators. Ever since these principles have been characteristic of theso-called 'Helsinki school', which consists of him and his pupils overtwo generations, namely Raija Sollamo, Anneli Aejmelaeus, SeppoSipilä and Anssi Voitila.

The principles outlined by him look very simple, but they are crucial,and they have been violated many times by a number of scholars.Firstly, the Septuagint is a translation which must be investigated assuch in comparison with the Hebrew Vorlage. The point of departureis always the Hebrew parent text. The focus of study is how thedifferent translators translated the same Hebrew expression or thesame linguistic structure. The text corpus to be considered should beunabridged or as complete as possible. Only a vast collection of ma-terial yields significant results with regard to different translationtechniques. The second principle emphasizes the importance of con-sidering the Koine background of different Septuagint translations inorder to enable one to evaluate whether or not a rendering was on apar with good Koine Greek and what effect normal Greek practiceand idiom had upon the different translators. The term translationtechnique is often connected with the Helsinki school and rightly so.The term needs to be understood correctly. It has nothing to do with

10 S. Segen, "Semitistische Marginalien I". ArOr 29 (1961), 87-89.11 The same series as mentioned in note 5, but Nide — Tom. 132, 1.

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The Origins of LXX Studies in Finland 165

technique in the sense that a certain translation would arise mechan-ically or inevitably, as if a machine had done it. Quite to the contrary,it is a human intellectual process with which we are dealing. Transla-tion technique implies the entire procedure —. how the translatorsworked, what their working habits were, what their ideals were andwhat their level of competence was.Soisalon-Soininen's book on infinitives was a masterpiece of the new

methodology. In it the author examined all the infinitives in the Heb-rew Bible and graded them philologically into different grammaticalcategories. Then he scrutinized the Septuagint translations of everycategory of. Hebrew infinitives. To be exhaustive he also consideredas a specific group all those Greek infinitives which did not corres-pond to any Hebrew infinitive. This investigation was a real success.12

Georg Bertram concluded his review with the words: "So bedeutet dieArbeit einen gewichtigen Schritt vorwärts zum Verständnis der Syn-tax der Septuaginta."13 Little by little the name Ilmari Soisalon-Soini-nen became famous among Septuagint scholars around the world, andit was associated with the study of translation technique.

In the 1970s he began a major project for studying the translationtechnique of the Greek Pentateuch. It was financed by the Academyof Finland. The corpus which was gathered then has formed a solidbasis for many later Septuagint studies. At the same time he gave hisguidance to my work on Renderings of the Semiprepositions in theSeptuagint. This was my doctoral thesis which I defended in March1979. Since then my colleague Anneli Aejmelaeus has written herdoctoral thesis using the material collected during the major projecton the Pentateuch. Her dissertation on Parataxis in the Septuagintwas published in 1982. Soisalon-Soininen himself wrote many articlesduring these years and read several papers at international congresses.Most of them were published as a jubililee volume on the occasion ofhis 70th birthday in 1987 under the title Studien zur Septuaginta-Syntax.Soisalon-Soininen had learnt from his own experience the import-

ance of international relations and co-operation. It was a lesson healso taught us from the very beginning. We learnt from him that weshould attend the international congresses for Septuagint studies

12 See the reviews, for instance, by Joseph Ziegler in TR 64 (1968), 211-212;J.D. Shenkel in JBL 85 (1966), 268; Georg Berttam in TLZ 92 (1967), 824-825; R.A.Barelay in Erasmus 23 (1971), 146-150.

13 Review by Georg Bertram in TLZ 92 (1967), 825.

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which have been held since 1971 in connection with the congressesfor Old Testament studies.Contacts between Sweden and Finland have been close during this

century. The seed of Finnish Septuagint studies was sown fromSweden, when Gerleman provided the theme for Soisalon-Soininen'sdissertation. Gerleman became famous for his studies on the GreekProverbs (1956).14 He also had a pupil in Lund — Bo Johnson — whowrote his doctoral thesis on Die hexaplarische Rezension des l. Sa-muelbuches der Septuaginta. When the disputation took place atLund in 1963, Professor Soisalon-Soininen was the opponent. Of BoJohnson's output could also be mentioned Die armenische Bibelüber-setzung als hexaplarischer Zeuge im 1. Samuelbuchs (1968) and He-bräisches Perfekt und Imperfekt mit vorangehendem w*. (1979). Hean extraordinary professor at Lund. So the Swedish Septuagint tradi-tion continued. The novel fruit of this continuing tradition is StaffanOlofsson, who wrote his doctoral thesis on a translation-technicaltheme under the title God is my Rock — A Study of TranslationTechnique and Theological Exegesis in the Septuagint and so cameclose to the Helsinki school. His disputation took place in 1988 withProfessor James Barr as the opponent. The doctoral thesis was pub-lished in corrected form in 1990 in Coniectanea Biblica {Old Testa-ment Series 31). In the same year his revised edition of reference ma-terial related to the dissertation was published under the title TheLXX Version — A Guide to the Translation Technique of the Septua-gint {Coniectanea Biblica. Old Testament Series 30).

One sad feature in Swedish-Finnish dialogue was the case of mycolleague Kyösti Hyvärinen. He began his studies under the guidanceof Soisalon-Soininen, but later moved to Sweden to serve as a minis-ter in the Swedish Church. He then presented his doctoral thesis toProfessor Helmer Ringgren in Uppsala in 1977. It dealt with the trans-lation of Aquila {Die Übersetzung von Aquila)15 and examined thetranslation technique followed by him. The sad point is that he did notfinish his work under the guidance of Soisalon-Soininen. I dare to say,the result would have been much better in that case. The other sadthing is that this promising scholar died young in Sweden.It has been typical of the Swedish tradition that they have had strong

14 Studies in the Septuagint III: Proverbs (Lunds Universitets Årsskrift N.F.[1.52.3t Lund 1956).

15 It was published in Coniectanea Biblica. Old Testament Series. Uppsala1977.

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The Origins of LXX Studies in Finland 167

support from their colleagues in Classical Greek, since such scholarsas Albert Wifstrand, Jerker Blomqvist and Lars Rydbeck — tomention only these three — have shown a particular interest in Koineauthors. Albert Wifstrand's article on the enclitic personal pronouns16

is appreciated very much by us in Helsinki. I personally have con-sulted Jerker Blomqvist's Koine studies many times17 and it is histextbook on New Testament Greek that we use in our faculty — inFinnish translation of course. Lars Rydbeck was a pupil of Wifstrand,but he concentrated on the relations between the Koine and the NewTestament.18

Contemporary Finnish classical scholars beginning with ProfessorHenric Zilliacus have been very interested in research on the Koineincluding our Septuagint project. In the 1970s they initiated, withProfessor Zilliacus at their head, a project for publishing Koine pa-pyri. The project still continues, the first volume of Papyri Helsingien-sis having appeared in 1986. The lectures and learned advice of Pro-fessor Holger Thesleff and Professor Maarit Kaimio have been agreat source of help to many of us. Professor Jaakko Frösen, who isfamous for knowing how to unwrap ancient mummies and opencarbonized papyrus rolls, wrote his doctoral thesis on the problem ofKoine and atticism under the title Prolegomena to a Study of theGreek Language in the First Centuries A.D. in 1974. Thus the mem-bers of the Helsinki school have always received solid support fromour Graecists, even though none of them has ventured into the fieldof the Septuagint.

In Autumn 1991 the Academy of Finland again began to supportFinnish Septuagint research by granting funds for a three-year projecton the translation technique of the Pentateuch. Our third generation,represented by Seppo Sipilä and Anssi Voitila, aim to produce theirdoctoral theses with the aid of these funds. To the great surprise of allexegetes in our faculty, the Department of Biblical Exegetics and itsproject Early Jewish and Christian Culture and Literature managed

16 Albert Wifstrand, "Die Stellung der enklitischen Personalpronomina beider Septuaginta" (K. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundets i Lund Årsberät-telse 1949-1950, II. Bulletin de la Société Royale des Lettres de Lund 1949-1950, II; Lund 1950), pp 44-70.

17 Jerker Blomqvist, Greek Particles in Hellenistic Prose (Lund 1969).18 Lars Rydbeck, Fachprosa, vermeintliche Volkssprache und Neues Testa-

ment. Zur Beurteilung der sprachlichen Niveauunterschiede im nachklassi-schen Griechisch (Uppsala 1967; Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. StudiaGraeca Upsaliensia 5).

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in 1994 to attain the status of a Centre of Excellence at the Univer-sity of Helsinki. It will provide a great impetus to all Biblical studiesin our faculty, and it also means that Septuagint studies have res-ources for the next five years.

I have recounted the story of the origins of LXX studies in Finlandin order to encourage all of you to believe in the future of LXXresearch, and to work in its favour in your own countries. Maybesome of you will be able to begin a new tradition of LXX studies atyour own universities. In this specialist area the future belongs tothose optimists who believe in the significance of LXX studies.

Abstract

The pioneer of LXX studies in Helsinki was Ilmari Soisalon-Soininen. Thisarticle relates the story of how he became interested in the Septuagint andof how he came to choose his specialist field, the study of the translationtechnique. Our inquiry is guided by his scholarly output beginning with hisdoctoral thesis Die Textformen der Sepluaginta-Übersetzung des Richterbu-ches (1951) and concluding with the mature demonstration of his skill in DieInfinitive in der Septuaginta (1965). Contacts with Sweden were of a closenature, and the seed of Finnish LXX studies was sown by Gillis Gerlemanfrom Lund. The long path of Soisalon-Soininen to the peak of internationalLXX scholarship could be characterized in terms of the Latin proverb Peraspera ad astra or of the biblical metaphor of a small mustard seed whichgrows into a large tree. Finnish LXX studies had a modest beginning, buteventually grew into the strong tradition of the "Helsinki school", which hasnow been transplanted to Göttingen, where Anncli Aejmelaeus is a professor(the successor to Professor Robert Hanhart).

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